Taco Belle: The Skinny on 'Drive-Thru Diet' and its Spokeswoman
January 11, 2010 by Nate Winter
Meet Christine Dougherty, the face (and body) of Taco Bell's new Drive-Thru Diet. If you're not familiar with the campaign, this TV spot for Drive-Thru Diet explains it all.
Now that you're done rubbing your eyes in disbelief, yes, Taco Bell is going healthy. Okay, healthy-ish, but still. Please note the ad's careful explanation that Drive-Thru Diet isn’t a weight loss program, and that Christine’s results aren’t typical. But still, the idea of a healthy Taco Bell campaign has stirred up some controversy and rubbed a few people the wrong way.
Some folks are up in arms about the idea of "healthy" menu items at Taco Bell because the idea seems simply impossible based on the chain's primarily greasy, fatty faux-Mexican fare. But when you remove all the cheese and sour cream, which is what this menu has done, it's not that difficult to imagine. The seven items on T-Bell's Drive-Thru Diet menu are all varying combinations of soft tortilla, meat, salsa and, in a couple cases, beans. Unsurprisingly, all seven are loaded with sodium, but otherwise fairly healthy.
The problem is that this health-conscious, rational, mature messaging is a dramatic departure from Taco Bell's existing brand identity. And while nobody is coming right out and saying it, I believe that's what Bell fans and others are really objecting to.
T-Bell's Track Record
A look at Taco Bell's other marketing pushes should shed some light on why Drive-Thru Diet doesn't fit the mold. Here's the marketing Taco Bell has been feeding us.
» The "Yo quiero Taco Bell" chihuahua dog campaign. It's a talking chihuahua. Nuff said.
» In April 1996, Taco Bell claimed to have purchased Philadelphia's Liberty Bell from the federal government and renamed it the "Taco Liberty Bell." People were furious, but it turned out to be an April Fool’s prank.
» In Fall 2008, Taco Bell put out a press release asking rapper 50 Cent to change his name to 79 Cent or 99 Cent to match new sale items on the fast feeder’s menu. The public thought it was funny; 50 Cent did not. He filed a suit against the Bell for making him an unauthorized spokesman in its PR ploy.
» (Quick interjection: with Taco Bell's reputation for pranks, Drive-Thru Diet is a perfect candidate for Dia de los Santos Inocentes, the Hispanic equivalent of April Fool's Day characterized by playing tricks on people. Unfortunately, the Hispanic holiday falls on December 28th and these ads didn’t show up until after the new year. Plus, Taco Bell isn't admitting to any prank.
» And then there's Fourthmeal, Taco Bell's branded term that loosely translates to "food porn for night owls." Case in point: a reading from the book of Fourthmeal. "When you're out late, we know that you;re craving melty, crunchy, spicy and grilled. You're craving fourthmeal." This campaign in particular revels in the unhealthiness of Taco Bell by shamelessly appealing to our primal desire for fast food.
» Even T-Bell's current "Think Outside the Bun" tagline suggests the brand's tendency to eschew more traditional, straightforward marketing programs.
Looking at these marketing efforts, it's not difficult to connect the dots into a sketch of the Taco Bell customer as a non-health-conscious, 18-to-24-year-old male night owl who enjoys silly humor and acts of uncorporate pranksterism. In other words: the audience of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.
You can see the audience quite clearly in this ad for the Black Jack Taco. Silly humor, hot women in tight clothes, a pretty boy with a black eye and the average guy (who represents our audience) gets to say the funny line. Ad nauseam. And there's this spot for the Volcano Taco. It's basically a light beer commercial with a romance shot of the taco at the end instead of a beer bottle.
Why "Drive-Thru Diet" Fails
Now let's compare all those examples to the Drive-Thru Diet campaign. It's health-conscious, female represented, rational, unfunny and focuses on lunch and dinner (not Fourthmeal). It's closer to Subway's boringly pedestrian Jared spokesman than anything Taco Bell's done in the last decade. (Can you think of two fast food brands that are more different than Taco Bell and Subway?) This context makes it pretty easy to see why everyone, not just the Taco Bell fan boy, is ticked off.
Interestingly, Drive-Thru Diet is simply a new messaging strategy for Taco Bell's Fresco menu, which substitutes salsa for cheese and sour cream in many T-Bell items. The Fresco menu has been around for a couple years now, although it's kept a low profile by not having a marketing push of its own. And that's my point: it's not the presence of healthier items on Taco Bell's menu that caused a backlash. It's the new attitude the chain has adopted in order to emphasize those healthy items.
There are two marketing strategies in play here: the funny, unhealthy Taco Bell, and the Drive-Thru Diet. They cannot coexist. It takes no stretch of the imagination to suggest that the Drive-Thru Diet ads are alienating Taco Bell's core customer, which will drive sales down. Even worse, I suspect the target audience for Drive-Thru Diet won't be easily swayed by Taco Bell's sudden change of direction. I expect this campaign to scare away and/or annoy existing customers while attracting few new ones. In short, it's a terrible idea.
This campaign is ludicrous not because Taco Bell's food is all that unhealthy (once you remove the cheese and sour cream), but because the Taco Bell brand represents the complete opposite of the values set forth in Drive-Thru Diet. It's a 180 that's got casual onlookers confused and Taco Bell's core customer feeling betrayed (and probably fat). And that's a combo more deadly than Nachos Bellgrande with an extra large Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
